You might have seen the headlines. Errol Musk (yes, that Musk) in Moscow. Alex Jones, grinning for the cameras. It all looked like a surreal sideshow. But behind the spectacle was something far more serious. On 9–10 June, the Kremlin-adjacent Tsargrad Institute hosted Future Forum 2050, a conference wrapped in nationalist fanfare and imperial nostalgia. The centrepiece wasn’t the guests—it was a 62-page document titled Russia 2050: Vision of the Future.
Most Western media ignored it. Too dense, too boring, too full of phrases like “civilisational model” and “macro-region.” But buried in its technocratic jargon is a blueprint for empire. Not a return to the Soviet Union as it was, but something more ambitious, and more dangerous.
The report opens with a blunt assertion: Russia must be an autocracy. Liberal democracy, it says, is a Western sham designed to mask oligarchic rule. Russia’s last thirty years of semi-pluralism are dismissed as a failed experiment. The document invokes Alexander III and Stalin as examples of strength, stability, and national revival. The answer to modernity’s chaos? One-man rule.
Then comes the familiar narrative about Ukraine. Not just that Ukraine is led by Nazis, but that it is a Nazi state—an artificial construction, created by the West to undermine Russia. The solution, predictably, is “denazification.” In practice, that means cultural erasure: destroy Ukrainian identity, language, education, and national memory. The goal isn’t peace. It’s errasure.
But the document doesn’t stop at Ukraine. It outlines a plan to build a 250-million-person “macro-region” under Russian leadership. That includes the post-Soviet states, parts of Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. It’s an empire in all but name, dressed up as a multipolar alternative to Western hegemony. The method is soft power where possible, hard power where necessary. No apologies.
Now, here’s where it gets really ugly.
Alongside Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, a gaggle of Western voices showed up to nod along—or at least pose for the photos. George Galloway. Alex Jones. Jeffrey Sachs. Max Blumenthal. A mix of washed-up politicians, conspiracy peddlers, disillusioned academics, and self-styled anti-imperialists. What unites them is not principle but posture: the compulsive need to oppose whatever the West is doing, even if it means siding with a regime openly committed to war, repression and empire.
George Galloway has spent years recasting Putin as a misunderstood defender of sovereignty, casting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as blowback against NATO aggression. He speaks the language of anti-imperialism, but it’s a hollowed-out shell. He’ll rage against Western war crimes—and he’s right to—but grows suddenly silent when it’s Russian shells hitting apartment blocks.
Alex Jones is easier to decode. He thrives on chaos. The Kremlin doesn’t care if he believes the nonsense he spews. It only matters that he spreads doubt, mistrust, and paranoia. He’s there to muddy the waters until truth becomes irrelevant.
Jeffrey Sachs is more tragic. Once the architect of neoliberal “shock therapy” in the former USSR, Sachs now presents himself as a sage of peaceful multipolarity. But in his quest to critique American power, he’s ended up performing apologetics for authoritarianism. He’ll talk endlessly about NATO’s missteps. Ask him about Bucha, and he changes the subject.
Max Blumenthal is a fixture in this scene. Through his site The Grayzone, he’s built a reputation for relentlessly attacking Western foreign policy. Fair enough. Someone should. But Blumenthal’s method is to ignore or discredit any evidence of repression by governments opposed to the US. When Russia bombs a hospital, he questions whether it happened. When a dictator cracks down on protests, he wonders aloud if they were CIA plants. It’s not journalism. It’s ideological laundering.
These men don’t share an ideology. Some are cranks, others are cynics. But all of them serve a purpose. Their presence in Moscow gives the impression of global consensus. Their words are echoed on Russian state media. They make Putinism sound like a legitimate alternative. They turn war into “anti-imperial struggle.” And they distract from what’s really happening on the ground: a violent campaign to erase a sovereign country and build a new imperial order.
Make no mistake—Russia 2050 is a war document. It maps out how to dismantle Ukraine, redraw borders, and reassert dominance over vast swathes of the globe. The language is bureaucratic, but the ambition is brutal. This is not defensive nationalism. It’s expansionist revanchism. And it’s being quietly endorsed, or at least tolerated, by voices in the West who ought to know better.
We’ve seen this movie before. Empire rarely announces itself honestly. It dresses up in civilisational language, talks about spheres of influence and mutual development, waves the flag of “tradition.” But at its core, it’s always the same: control, extraction, repression.
If we let this slide. If we keep letting people like Galloway, Sachs and Blumenthal posture as brave dissenters while echoing Kremlin lines—we’re doing half the Kremlin’s work for them. The tanks have already rolled. The deportations are happening. The destruction is real. This document just lays out what comes next.
And the more we pretend it’s just talk, the easier we make it for them to turn it into reality
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